Tempus (39 page)

That made me look up.  I knew those eyes, and they were kind, concerned even.  I hadn’t looked in them in the gazebo.  I kept my arms tightly around Gabriel, my anchor.  “Hi,
Thomas
.”

“Hello, Jessie.”

They had convinced me to go to the library.  I recognized everything in it.  Memories had flooded back the moment I had walked in the door.  When I was comfortable enough, Gabriel had left me with his father and gone to the kitchen.  There was still dinner with my dad, and they felt it was important.

Thomas had explained so many things that my head was spinning.  They wouldn’t tell me the number of times that we had “repeated” this, but I could figure out from the looks they had exchanged that it was a
lot
.

I still didn’t understand most of what they told me.  They threw around names like ‘observers,’ ‘travelers,’ and ‘interceptors’—mostly when talking to each other—and instead of helping me figure things out, it mostly made me more confused than ever.

“I’m sorry this is so difficult, Jessie, I truly am.”  Thomas said, sitting behind his huge wooden desk.  “Gabriel seems to think that we have made a
mistake
by not telling you everything possible, and I am beginning to think he could have been right.”

“Why?  Is there something different?”  So far I had mostly listened, not asking questions.

“Yes and no.”  He looked thoughtful for a moment.  “But I can’t say for certain the reason.  Gabriel is more sensitive to an impending time-shift than I am.  Maybe it’s my age.”  He laughed.

I had no idea what he was talking about.

“There is a ‘hiccup’ here.  We don’t know for certain how long it’s been taking place, but it could not have been long—we don’t think.  Our theory is that somewhere we missed something important.”

“Who did?  Who missed something?”  I asked.  “What kind of something?  I’m not getting this at all.”

“Gabriel and I explained that I am an ‘observer.’  I study history, past, present, and
future
.  A paradox, I know, at least to you.”  I nodded.  “That’s what I do, nevertheless.  I am to find significant inconsistencies in
future
history.  Changes that should not have taken place.”

He pulled out a desk drawer, removed a piece of paper and a couple of pens with different colored ink.  He drew four large black dots on the paper, equally spaced apart, in a line from side to side.

“These dots represent the unchangeable things.  These things are inevitable, immovable, the entire foundation of time its’ self.  There is nothing anyone anywhere can do to remove them, and they are relevant to every single person on the planet.” 

“Fate.”  I said.

“Based on
your
understanding of the word, yes.  Fate, destiny, and unavoidable.”  He agreed.  “They can be shifted, however, and the outcome is not always good.” 

He drew a few more dots, smaller and more random.  “Think of these as ‘possibilities.’  If this were your ‘time-line,’ then all of these smaller dots would represent major choices in your life.  Choose one side, and your line goes this way, but inevitably it ends up at the same place.”  He scooted the page closer, where I could see it.

“All the little movements between are irrelevant, at least according to your destination, and the destination of the world as a whole.  The smaller dots are relevant to you, specifically.”  He seemed to think deeply for a moment.  “Let’s say you were born on ‘big dot number one.’  The next dot, the small one the black line goes through, was your decision to go to college.  ‘Big dot number two’ is the worlds' decision that anyone with a college degree earns maximum wages, the rest only minimum wage from that day forward.  You can live a comfortable life from then on because of your earlier decision.”

“You can’t lose your degree, and while all the larger dots are inevitable, whatever they may be, any other decision cannot undo the first, and that first put you in a wonderful financial position.  Your life can be happy, all the way to the end of it.”

I liked that idea, but it also made me nervous.  Suddenly decisions seemed much more important than they ever had.

He took back the paper drew with another color, and shoved it over for me to see.

“Let’s say this red line represents your simply living life.  College wasn’t even a consideration, not that you necessarily chose not to go, but the decision was irrelevant to you personally.  You get to ‘big dot number two’ with no college degree.”

I wrinkled my nose at the paper.

“Since a college degree is now of paramount importance, only those with the means can afford the education, the wait is long, and they only take the top students since there is now limited room.  That one choice, or lack thereof, has now sentenced you to a probable life of poverty.  If nothing else, it has made life more difficult, and caused you to make other choices down the road that you otherwise would not have made.”

“So where do you come in?  Do you mess with my dots?”  I was glaring at the paper.

He laughed, a deep rumbling sound.  “Not exactly.  Your dots are mostly irrelevant.  Average people, living their lives from day to day make no significant changes.”  I was glaring at
him
now.  “I’m not saying you’re irrelevant as a
person
, Jessie.  You do have to think of things on a larger scale than that, though.”

“I don’t get it.  If the big dots are inevitable, and the little dots are irrelevant, then why are you here?  What makes
you
relevant?”  I was a little annoyed with how this was going, and not understanding made it worse.

“My job is to keep balance.”  He twisted the paper sideways a little.  “If everything points down hill, and these big dots were balls, they would roll faster and faster to the bottom.  If I twist it the other way, like this,” he turned it the opposite way, “It would also go faster and faster, because the big dots would get closer together, having in ways the same effect as time became compressed.  Different reasons, similar outcome.”

“The end of time?”  I asked.

“Possibly.”  He shrugged.  “Or the beginning of something else.”  He pulled a book off his desk and flipped through some pages.  “Have you ever wondered why Hippocrates described the symptoms of pneumonia over two thousand years ago, yet we only found a reliable treatment around fifty years ago?”

“Not really.”

“For most of history, we,
my kind
, believed we were doing the right thing by ‘slowing time down.’  It’s not just a matter of balance, we have the ability to delay things, and we attempted to change things that would slow the progression down.”

He reached into another stack of books and pulled out ‘The Complete Predictions of Nostradamus.’  He slid it across the desk to me, and watched my face.  I picked up the book and opened it.  I got an inexplicable shiver up my spine.

“Have you ever wondered why his prophecies endure, even to this day?”  He looked at me pointedly.

“Are you trying to tell me he was like
you
?”  I looked down and read a small portion that was circled in red ink.

‘Earthshaking fire from the center of the world will cause the towers around the new city to shake.’

“What could be the purposes of prediction, do you think?”  He asked.

“To prevent, or sometimes to prepare.  I guess to prepare more than anything else.”  I had never considered it before.

“If you look at history today, you would correctly perceive an acceleration in knowledge and accomplishments over the past two hundred years.  The last fifty years have accelerated exponentially compared to the previous thousands.”

“Does that mean something is wrong with time, then?”  I asked.

“It means time is
correcting
itself, or trying to.  I believe part of it is because, for centuries upon centuries, we interfered with the natural progression of time.  However, there is now this ‘hiccup.’  Something has been changed, and neither my colleagues nor I can find the source of the anomaly.  Our reason for existing is to keep things on track, keep the balance.  It took millennia to understand our true purpose.”

“I still don’t get it.  If things are inevitable, if there is fate, and if those big dots are going to happen no matter what, then you should just be able to leave everything alone and things will happen like they’re supposed to, right?”

“In theory.”  He got a thoughtful look on his face.  “Do you believe in the Bible?”  He suddenly asked.

“Umm, yeah, mostly.”  I thought of my mom’s face, but heard Gabriel’s voice, ‘
we give thee thanks, O Lord
.’  “I believe in God.” 

He smiled.  “The hardest thing for some people to reconcile is the fact that we are given free will, yet God clearly left prophecies and warnings.  He foretold what has and is to happen, knows every choice we will make, the last breath we will take, and the impact we will have.  He planned our path before we were born, nevertheless we
choose
.  It is the greatest enigma in history—yet we believe it, we have faith.”

He leaned back in his chair, contemplating.  “For all our learning, our technological advances, for the knowledge accumulated throughout time, we are still but fools in the universe, fools with no knowledge at all but what has been allowed us.”

He sat forward again, leaning across the desk toward me.  He held out his hand, and I could feel the pull, I knew what he was doing.  I lifted my hand and placed it in his large one.

“
There
.  I did not impose my will on you, I merely suggested, and you chose.”
 
He squeezed my hand slightly and I felt an intense but painless charge.  “There are things never meant to be understood, Jessie.  Things which cannot now, nor ever, through any means, be deciphered.  Not through dreams, nor tests, nor divination, nor science, nor speculation.”

“Time has been resetting,
without
our interference, for several years, randomly.  We have all been in search of the source.  Something significant was changed, by accident or malicious intent, and we cannot locate it.  We have to
assume
it was accidental and therefore unrecorded, or we would have located it by now.”  He shifted in his seat a small bit, and then leaned even closer.

“When Gabriel first saw you, he insisted I purchase the mirror immediately.  That is one of the things
we
do, and I will explain more on that sometime, but not now, not
this
time...  When he saw you, he told me the pull was so strong he well nigh went through the mirror, straight to you. 
Good Lord
, I’m glad the boy is disciplined.”  He chuckled.

I wanted to know what any of the other stuff had to do with me, and what did he mean time was resetting without interference,
for years
?  “Wait, wait.  Are you saying that time can reset, and no one on the planet knows?  Wouldn’t things change?  Wouldn’t something change that someone would notice?”

I had been mostly silent, but a million questions popped into my head.  “What about that end dot?  If that were the end, then wouldn’t everything stop?  Like you and Gabriel, would you catch up, or would it just
stop
?  If there is time ahead of me, which I have to assume there is, then will
I
stop when
they
reach the end dot, or do I just keep going until I get there too?  Where is the end?  Is it just the end for some or the end for everybody— like a race, but first one there means the game is over?”